


the speaking silence of a dream

by evewithanapple



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 10:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3566696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mina pays a nightly visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the speaking silence of a dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
> 
>    My very life again tho’ cold in death:
> 
> Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
> 
>    Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
> 
>       Speak low, lean low,
> 
> As long ago, my love, how long ago.
> 
>  
> 
> -Christina Rossetti, "Echo"
> 
>  

 

Mina once knew a small parcel of London, and believed that to be enough. Her family home; her circle of friends and extended family; the best (only the best) ballrooms and restaurants. The rest of the city hovered on the periphery of her consciousness, seen but never acknowledged, but for the scandalized whispers of parlour gossip and- perhaps- tales borne by women of a charitable bent. Mina did not count herself among their number, as it was believed by her father and mother that she was far too frail to withstand the grit and grime of London's danker quarters. She spent her youth shuffled carefully between neighbourhoods that met with her father’s approval: Pimlico, Mayfair, Grosvenor Square. She did not think to question this. Such insolence was always Vanessa’s domain.

But now, in her second life- her dark life, her full life, born into it as she was, in blood- Mina knows every corner of London, every soot-stained stone of it. She knows the sweet dusting of sugar over Whitechapel, where her things far worse than her have been known to prowl; she knows the stink of Poplar, the grocers of Coventry, the fallen women of Haymarket. For them, she feels some sympathy- what sympathy, at any rate, that she is now capable of feeling. For is she not now something of a fallen woman herself? But for all the new and exciting sensations this wider London holds for her, and for all her new master has warned her against feeding in the streets she used to call home (for what will raise the public alarm more quickly than a well-bred woman found missing from her marital bed?) Mina yet finds herself drawn to the house that she once called home. Specifically, to a room on the upper floor, whose window- while locked- can be carefully pried open without rousing the attention of anyone within. The master of the house, Mina thinks, ought to be more careful: his home is sorely in need of better security, for all he keeps the silent man standing guard. But the silent man does not stand by the room that holds Mina’s interest. It seems that, for all the treasures the house contains, Malcolm Murray fatally underestimates the most precious one of all.

Having opened the window, Mina climbs carefully over the sill, holding her skirt away from the ground for fear of ripping it and leaving a telltale scrap of fabric behind. She is no longer a lady, and no longer has any use for calling-cards. This visit is to be a secret, both from her master (he does not ask where she goes at nights, and she does not offer to tell him) and from the person she visits: a woman, china-white and ink-haired, sleeping in the bed she once shared with Mina.

Mina leans over her friend’s prone figure, examining Vanessa in the thin sliver of light that enters through the open window. Vanessa was always prone to paleness and to slenderness, but since Mina’s departure, she seems to have undergone a great transformation: not visible, perhaps, to those who live on the other side of the veil, but Mina no longer wears the blinders of mortality. Vanessa has been touched by death. Mina does not know precisely what form death has taken, or which of the house’s visitors brought it here, but she sees its stamp on her friend. Vanessa’s face hangs in the gloom, moon-like, surrounded by her hair; it makes her appear disembodied, as though she has finally cut away her useless, wasting flesh and emerged as a being of pure intelligence. Such a concept, Mina suspects, would appeal to her friend; the morbidity of a bodiless head, the high metaphysics of living by wits alone. Mina is no pure being of air, however; death has stopped her heart, but not her hunger. She is no god, no sprite, no fairy, but a gaping need that no amount of blood or viscera can fill.

She traces a finger over Vanessa’s slightly parted lips, feeling warm breath ghost against her skin. Warm and cold means very little to Mina now, but she does appreciate the irony of the fact that it is Vanessa- her dark mirror, her Satan-self, the Lucifer to her Michael- who now lives, who moves in the world as Mina was meant to. Vanessa, who carries death within her yet bursts with life at every turn. Even now, as she sleeps, Mina can feel a restlessness within Vanessa’s body- a hunger for chaos, neither good nor bad (by Mina’s understanding, which she knows most mortals do not share) but eager, barely held in check by Vanessa’s lingering sense of propriety. Mina would smash that sense if she could, make Vanessa her sister in all meanings of the word, take flight with her through the city of London and never look back on this poor, paltry excuse for a family home. The man she called father has filled this house with trophies and strays, but Mina knows now that it has always been an empty shell of what Malcolm Murray wishes it to be. Even when her mother and brother still lived, the Murrays were a shadow-play of a family, visible only in the light cast by those who were willing to burn brightly. Only Vanessa brings the house its vitality. Only Vanessa keeps them all alive. The silent guard, the rough American, the pale-eyed doctor- none would survive long, if the tie that binds them were to be severed. Vanessa is that tie. Mina wishes she could snap it in two.

Vanessa shifts slightly in her sleep, her night shift slipping downwards to reveal the pale skin of her breast. Mina cannot help herself entirely: she bend to press her lips to the white skin, knowing that Vanessa will not wake to remember it. If any trace of this encounter lingers in her mind, she will dismiss it as a phantasm. Her skin, like her breath, is warm, and Mina knows that no matter how much she takes- even if she sunk her teeth in and drained Vanessa dry, leaving her a cold and withered husk- it would leave her forever unsatisfied, starving for a taste and touch she cannot feel. Others will come and go and partake of what Vanessa has to offer, and Mina hates them all for it, but she cannot deny the truth to herself: if she ever allowed herself this indulgence, it would destroy her as surely as it would Vanessa. There is some balance remaining in the world, and they are a part of it: the living darkness, the dead light. Mina has grown bold in her second life, but something- her better nature, perhaps, whatever that may be- holds her back from this ultimate act of destruction. The living may destroy, but they also may build. The dead have only the capacity to consume

Mina backs away from Vanessa, watching as her friend shifts and sighs again in her sleep. She reaches the windowsill and climbs up, drinking in one last, lingering look at Vanessa before taking flight. She will come again, she knows. She and Vanessa are twin souls, dark and light, night and day, and they must always brush against each other in their eternal dance, though they can never truly meet face to face. Mina knows the steps of the dance. She is eager for it to begin again.


End file.
